a weeeeee bit off topic
 

Video cards in servers dont matter much... Im running a dual MP system now and I must ask: assuming you meant "except" instead of "accept" in the above quote, why would you put together a server with slow HDDs (esp if its a file/game server)?

Perhaps a MX series is ok for Dell or Gateway, but not for me, sorry. look at the benchmarks, they speak volumes. %increase of performance > %increase of $$

wetzel, you've got the system down. Wait for the R300 to come out. It will drop the Ti series prices significantly and then pick one up :)

Price Range is about 150 bucks.....im sure I can get something really nice from pricewatch

yes, wait a little bit for a radeon 9700. i have an 8500 128mb and its much better quality graphics than anything nvidia makes

Here's Jeremy's words of advice (you better take them or I'll come down there and beat the cr** outta you!):

GF2 - Nope. Never. You will only need to upgrade your card in a few months because you'll find out you can't play a game you just bought. You're better off then just spending $50 more and getting an 8500.

GF4MX - stay away like the plague. They took pixel shaders and all the features that make it worthwhile. It's basically a wanna-be GF2 that tried to be a GF3 and failed. The GF4MX was originally to be the GF3MX but the idiots in the PR department decided to call it the GF4MX.

GF3 - Good line of cards. The GF3 Ti 200 is what I currently have and can be had nowdays for around $100. I got it for that price last year at the BB after-turkey day sale. Otherwise I would've gotten the 8500, mainly because of the superior 2D graphics.

GF4 - Good line, but waaay too expensive. I don't see paying the price premium for the minimal amount of performance you get over the cheaper cards.

Radeon 8500 / 8500LE - Great performance, feature rich for tomorrow's games. ATI's driver support in the past has been iffy, but now it seems to have matured quite well. Go to www.rage3d.com and see what the people have to say over there. ATI cards have a very good history of good display quality. They have extensive features for making DVD playback great.

Best place to buy seems to be www.newegg.com. They are inexpensive, yet very reliable.

gniticxe,
the reason for the slow hdd was first off because thats all we had at the time we have a scsi hdd but are having some issues with it. hdd speed is not an issue anyways in a game server. ram is what affects it over all. hdd will just cause files to initial load slower. soon as everything is loaded to ram it speeds up.



my opinion on ati from bad experiences:
ati is no good. nvidia rules all. stick with nvidia. much better quality and much faster. maybe pay a little more at times but ur paying for the quality.

PNY
 

PNY has 64 meg GeForce4 MX cards for ~80 bucks and 64 meg GeForce Ti4200 cards for ~180 bucks. Nice price for good cards from the heartland of cool stuff and birthplace of every cool person ever except James Dean; yes, you're right, New Jersey.

BTW: Those cool people include Danny DeVito, Shaquille O'Neil, Frank Sinatra, I could go on and on....

Chris, I gotcha. Undoubetdly RAM/procs are a bigger factor than hdd in a game server, its just been my experience while being a game host at LAN parties that i turn into the file server too :rolleyes:

2 reasons to wait to buy video card if you're in the market:
Doom 3
Unreal Tournament 2003

mmmmm